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A fellow founder snapped a picture at dinner one night and slid it across the table. It was a shot from the restaurant restroom: a sink with exposed pipes, a hose, two makeshift braces holding things together, and a single metal bucket catching the leak.
It doesn’t look like much. But if you’ve ever built something — anything — you know exactly what you’re looking at.
This is what real looks like.
Not the polished version you see on Instagram or LinkedIn. Not the shiny new feature drop. Just the mess underneath. The work-around that became semi-permanent, the thing you meant to fix but didn’t because something else mattered more.
We’ve all been there. A duct-taped fix. A zip-tied system. A bucket that doesn’t complain and just works... for now.
This article is about those buckets, the ones we all have but rarely talk about. And why confronting them might be the difference between building a business that falls apart or one that leaves a legacy.
When Temporary Becomes the Standard
What you don’t see in the photo is everything that came before the fix: the string of trade-offs, compromises, and judgment calls that led to a plastic bucket becoming part of the infrastructure.
The bucket didn’t end up there because your team didn’t care. It’s because they were already over-capacity, solving for something more urgent.
That’s the nature of company building. In the early days, when you're just trying to survive, you learn to move fast, to focus, to make decisions in the moment. You get comfortable with imperfect systems because the perfect ones take time you don’t have. You tell yourself you’ll go back. That it’s temporary. That once things stabilize, you’ll clean it all up.
And often, that’s true. But not always.
Sometimes the work-around becomes a fixture. It blends into the environment. People stop talking about it. New team members don’t even realize it was ever meant to be temporary.
That’s when the real risk sets in — not because the system can’t function but because dysfunction starts to feel acceptable. And once it does, the standards that used to guide decisions start slipping, replaced by work-arounds that no one questions anymore.
There’s a difference between deciding when it's the right time to fix something and forgetting it needs to be fixed. One is focus. The other is a step toward lowering the bar.
What Work-Arounds Say About Founders
Buckets under sinks say a lot about the people building the place.
Sometimes they signal that the team is still in the early stages and moving fast. That someone made a judgment call to stay focused on what matters most. That the choice wasn’t negligence but intent — a trade-off in service of momentum. Other times it's a signal that people don't care enough about the customer experience, and that's an entirely different problem.
But these buckets also surface a harder question every founder needs to ask themselves: How long do we keep pushing forward before turning around to fix what we’ve stepped over?
This is one of the core tensions of leadership — knowing when to tolerate imperfection and when to clean it up. Tension between speed and stability. Between the thing that needs attention and the thing that just needs to work right now. Between good enough and built to last.
Founders who build healthy, resilient companies don’t ignore the buckets. They flag them. Maybe even make them part of the road map. They don’t get distracted by them, but they don’t forget them either.
Because the goal isn’t to fix everything. Great founders know this isn’t a good use of our time. It’s to stay aware of what still needs fixing. And eventually, the organization enters into a stage where the bucket becomes a source of friction — not just functionally, but culturally. People start asking why it’s still there. Someone speaks up. You realize it’s time.
And that moment? That’s a sign the company is ready to operate at a higher standard and that you’re ready to lead it there.
Don’t Let the Temporary Fixes Define You
Every team, every department, every company has its version of the bucket under the sink. It might be a broken hiring process. An undocumented system. An unresolved issue. Something you’ve learned to work around that you know, deep down, needs to be addressed.
And here’s the thing: Most of those temporary fixes work — for now. But they leak. It may be a slow leak, but it's consistent. And eventually, if left unchecked, it shapes the way your people think, act, and perform.
So what do you do?
You don’t need to fix every bucket today. But you do need to build the habit of seeing and documenting them (and making sure your team does the same).
Here’s how to start:
- Name the work-around: When a temporary fix is all you have the time for, the most important thing you can do is be honest about it. Bring it into the open. Say it out loud. Call it what it is — a work-around, not a long-term solution.
- Log it as an issue: Once you’ve named the work-around, don’t let it vanish into the background. Track it like you would any other issue Add it to your BOS so it stays visible, not just to you but to everyone it affects. When your team sees you log it, they understand it’s on the radar and that it matters.
- Evaluate the impact: Not every work-around needs to be fixed right away. But it does need to be assessed. Use your Focus Filters to determine how much it’s costing you —whether in time, energy, dollars, or trust. Is it creating friction? Slowing down other systems? Compromising standards? Decide where it fits in the broader picture of your long-term goals.
- Return to it regularly: Temporary fixes aren't meant to be forever. Review the list quarterly (or more often). Ask yourself: Is it holding us back now? Is now the time for a more permanent fix? If it is, name the next step and assign ownership. Because only what you revisit gets resolved.
And if you’re using Ninety, this gets even easier. You can log these temporary fixes as issues to discuss at your next Weekly Team Meeting, add them to your long-term issues list to address at your next Quarterly, or assign them as Rocks when the time is right. It’s not about fixing everything at once — it’s about keeping what matters visible, part of the conversation, and eventually, solvable.
The point isn’t to live without mess — that's an inevitable part of building, running, and scaling a business. It’s to stay conscious of it. Because pretending the bucket isn’t there doesn’t make you more focused. It just makes you unaware. And unaware founders build companies that stall for reasons they should’ve seen coming.
The best companies aren’t flawless. But they’re honest. And they don’t let work-arounds become the standard for how things are done.
What You Choose to See
Founders don’t just build companies. They shape what gets noticed, what gets addressed, and what becomes part of the culture.
It’s easy to ignore the bucket under the sink. Especially when everything else feels more urgent. But the longer you pretend it’s not there, the more likely it becomes permanent — not just in your operations but in how your team thinks about standards, accountability, and leadership.
You don’t need to fix everything today. But you do need to see what’s broken and commit to not letting it fade into the background.
Because the longer you ignore it, the more it defines you. But when you name it, track it, and eventually fix it — you’re not just solving a problem. You’re building a standard for your team.
And if you’ve got your own version of that bucket, an artifact from the early days, the messy fix that still somehow works, I’d love to see it. Send it my way. I’m collecting them.
